


We're All Wonderful People

by LiaLox



Series: Finding Our Voices [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Comedy, Drama & Romance, Especially when you're a Bisithia, F/M, Fluff, GoodDad!Verstael, Horror, Human Experimentation, Imperial!Prompto, Life Isn't Easy, MT!Prompto, he tries anyways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-23 07:22:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11984985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiaLox/pseuds/LiaLox
Summary: Prompto gulped. "Um. Because twelve screens means twelve times the fun?" Verstael glared at him. "Awww, it's fine, I bet you still have it in your will that I get to keep this place right? Get it? Keep? ...Hold on, did you actually play Call of the Empire? 'Cause the this is starting to look real famil--"A fit of coughs silenced him. He’s aware of some slick consistency, coagulating in his throat as it’s forced out of his lungs. When he pulls his hand away from his mouth, it’s a thickened slime that’s left in his palms; a black whose edges skirt about the colour of iodine."Dad?" Prompto asked, feeling his heartbeat quicken with every drop of black bile that spilled from his lips. "...Dad?" He asked again, with increasing hysteria. It's in his tears now, blanketing his vision with black. "Is this... is this supposed to happen?"(Part of the Finding Our Voices AU, where Imperial!Prompto is Lunafreya’s personal guard. You don’t need to read the previous part for this fic, just sit down, relax, and take in the (he tries to be a) GoodDad!Verstael)





	We're All Wonderful People

**Author's Note:**

> Whatever genre this is, it is just my type. 8D Before I knew it, the one-chapter backstory for Finding Our Voices got way out of hand. Like: “1.6k words turned into 8k words and the word count is still going up” type of out of hand. Oops. 
> 
> It’s just that, it’s canon that Iedolas and Verstael were nice people at some point. Why does nobody ever write about them being nice? @_@
> 
> THIS AU HAS FANART: http://onpanwa.tumblr.com/post/164066333863/finding-our-voices-by-lialox-me-ooooo-a-fic-of  
> ISN'T IT THE GREATEST THING YOU'VE EVER LAID EYES ON  
> (Prompto is wearing one of the uniforms used by Biggs and Wedge)

The room is quiet, save for the gentle sloshing of fluid coming in and out of a tank. It’s a pale green, bordering on blue, reminiscent of the calm seas ‘she’ wanted to show him. He swallows down the thought of ‘her’, hoping to let it rest in his gut, but feeling a burn in his chest instead.

If he looked carefully enough inside the tank, he would be see the beginnings of the project he didn’t want to carry. It’s a humanoid shape, and that’s as close to _human_ as he’s willing to let himself call _it_.

He breathes in the scent of fumes and antiseptic. Feels the stiff fabric of a lab coat brush against his skin. 

He’s got a plaque in one hand, and a child in another. The child is resting limply in his arms, face buried in the crook of his neck, skin supple in a way only a child’s could be. He sets the plaque down on the platform, bending awkwardly so not to wake him. It’s a perfect fit.

He turns to leave, and hesitates. He lets his fingers trail the words, one last time, every raised letter seeming to give him strength. This isn’t a job he could do alone. It isn’t one he even wanted to do. But it’s for the child in arms, his only son, and for the name engraved on steel.

It reads:

 

_In memory of E. Besithia_

_It was by war's hands your life was ended. Let it be by mine to end this war in turn._

_V._ _Besithia_

 

 

* * *

 Prompto: Age 8

Verstael: Age 54

* * *

 

_Squib-squib._

_Squib-squib._

The wheels on the office chair squeaked a little with each bounce.

"Prompto." It had been two years since Verstael Besithia’s tiny bundle of sugar-induced excitement found a place in his office. It wasn’t getting any easier.

 _Squib-squib._ The chair peeped defiantly as it inched closer to a bookshelf; red ornamental carpeting did nothing to prevent the racket.

" _Prompto_." 

 _Squib-squib._ Gods, the next available seat in this room had chains attached to it, and he was one _squib_ away from being questioned by social services. 

"Prompto, for the love of Shiva,” Verstael strained to have some level of peace within his voice. “If you don't sit still I will _tie_ you to that chair—“ He slammed the drawer shut on his desk, causing the child to jolt. “Lock its _wheels_ , and tape your _mouth_ _shut_."

"But I don't wanna sit in a chair all day. I don't wanna be like _you_ ," Prompto whined, and Verstael could feel one of his veins dangerously close to popping. "I wanna be all pew-pew!"

Prompto shot at him with his finger guns, twirling around in the office chair.

"And what gave you that idea?" Verstael snapped, watching his son sink in his chair at the outburst. "Do you think battlefields to be a plaything? It is not a place for you!" 

The wetness behind those bright eyes, swelling with the knowledge that if he looks pitiful enough he’d get his way, shot at his direction. The chair spun to a halt.

"I wanna be _pew-pew_ ," Prompto whispered, half-hidden behind his seat, but finger guns still raised. His son, in all his innocence, may be the only one left in this Keep who has no sense of fear for _who_ he is. It sinks in his heart, knowing that one day this part of him would disappear—mere footprints in the snow towards a far more frigid destination.

An Imperial Minister’s son does not simply live free of his father’s burdens.

Verstael sighed and rubbed his temples. He pulled out a cube from his drawer. "If you solve this, I will consider your request."

It’s a puzzle with various colors of smaller cubes on each side.

That seemed to satisfy Prompto, who immediately grasped the cube in his palms. It’s big between his fingers, but it’s enough that he can move the pieces. The boy settles in on his quiet concentration.

And for once, his office was at peace.

 

* * *

Prompto: Age 12

Verstael: Age 58

* * *

 

Prompto woke up in his father’s bed with a jolt. It’s disorienting—waking up somewhere so familiar and yet not, that it takes him a moment to remember what happened the night before. He grips the sheets.

He remembers getting too curious, or too lost (both, probably) the day before when he was visiting his father’s workplace. It gets lonely being by himself in the apartment all the time, his father understands, so he’s been allowed to come and go for as long as he remembers. His father doesn't play with him, but watching him work is better than the numbing boredom of an empty home. All he has to do is stand by the doors and let it ‘scan his DNA’ or something and they would open. It was different yesterday when he noticed a door he hadn’t seen before. 

There were a lot of tanks inside, and he had looked inside one of them, hoping to see some fish. He really likes fish.

Instead he met dead eyes like mirrors of his own, floating in the tank, and he burst out _screaming_. 

He had cried as he ran aimlessly around the Keep, trying to run from the truth in its walls, and he cried even as a Magitek Patrol picked him up and dropped him in front of his father. He cried through _Prompto-you-were-not-born-from-a-tank_ all the way through dumbed-down explanations of mechanical processing and the ride home. Even when he ran out of tears and his hiccups stopped, he’d clung to his father, shamelessly terrified of the people in the tanks who looked _too much_ like him.

He clung all through the night, it seemed, and now he was staring at the dining area from beyond the doorway.

There’s a stack of papers sitting next to his cereal bowl. The sight of it makes him sink back into the covers, protecting him from what was probably homework he forgot to do the night before. He buried himself deeper into the bed. Maybe this is just a dream, and when he wakes up, this nightmare will be gone.

Then there won’t be tank-people, and then there won’t be homework. 

“I know you’re awake,” his father’s voice called out. “I’ve something to discuss with you.” 

Prompto doesn’t reply. What if he just _pretended_ to be asleep? Or better yet, what if he said he was sick, and couldn’t go to school?

“Very well, I’ll discard your cereal,” Verstael threatened. He made a show of moving the bowl away as audibly as possible. “ _Starve_.”

 _That_ got him out of bed and sitting in front of his Commodore Crunch.

“Do you know what this is?” Verstael asked, as Prompto settled himself on his seat. He pointed at images that looked like they were printed as a Word document.

Prompto tried to make himself as small as possible. “Homework,” he replied meekly.

“Not quite,” Verstael replied, leaning back. “It’s an explanation to your inquiry yesterday.  Refer to figure one.”

Prompto looked at the first page, labeled underneath the picture. It says: _Figure 1: Gralean War Orphan, Winter 688._ It’s a filthy boy out on the streets in the dead of winter. The glaze on his eyes gives him an unfocused sort of stare, and it reminds Prompto of something else entirely.

"Is this one of your experiments?" Prompto asked.

"No," Verstael said, patiently. “This is what happens when you use people—not ones bred for machinery, but real soldiers in war. People with families, waiting for them to come home.” 

Prompto blinked. “So what's a war orphan?"

"Someone who has lost their parents in a war," Verstael replied. 

Sorta like me, Prompto thought, but the boy in the photo was nothing like him. He's swaddled in rags, cheeks burning pink, and the curves of his lips are a frigid blue. There's frost clinging to matted hair and blonde lashes—but what catches his attention the most are the boy’s eyes. They’re a hazy green, not quite staring at the camera, deeply set into his skull in a way only hunger could.

Prompto took a very conscious bite of his cereal. 

"You're one of the lucky ones, Prompto,” his father added, sensing his discomfort. “There are far too many casualties involved in each battle."

“But I like cashews.”

“ _Casualties_ ,” Verstael corrected. “People killed or injured in a war.” 

Prompto grew quiet, and went back to eating his cereal. Then the tank-people are meant to replace casualties—brought to life just to die. The thought makes his stomach churn. He places his spoon back within the bowl, and watches the bits soak up milk for a while before he speaks again: "What about putting those thinking computers in the mechs instead?" 

"Figure eight." Verstael flips the page for him. It's a picture of two Lucian soldiers taking down an armored tank with ease. "Full AIs take too long to determine the next course of action in the heat of battle. Magitek Troopers are capable of making judgements quickly, for the reasons you'd suspect."

Because that ‘machine’ has an actual _brain_ inside it.

"Why don't we just stop fighting?" Prompto pleaded him, halfway done chewing at another bite. "You can make it happen, can't you, Dad?"

"I expected that question,” Verstael muttered under his breath. “See figures fifteen to twenty. This is why Niflheim must be at war." He pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped chocolate cereal crumbs from his mouth. The motion is rough, and drags the skin of his cheek along with the movement. “And don’t talk with your mouth full.”

They went through photographs of terrain; all of them beautiful. The pure white of Niflheim's tundra, snow and deserts sculpted carefully by wind. Tenebrae's was even better, full of colours he didn't even think were possible on plants. He's gonna have to ask Lady Lunafreya about them if he sees her again. The scene was only rivalled by the spectrum of Altissia's coral reefs, and he didn’t think _that many_ things could live under the water. 

“Whoa,” Prompto gasped, picking an aerial view of Lucis, which somehow combined the desert, seas, lush forests, deep ravines and a towering volcano all in one frame. Streams of earth sprouted from nowhere to form impossible arcs, stitching together what looked like all of Eos in one country. “I wanna be a photographer and actually _see_ all this stuff.”

Verstael quickly took the picture from him and laid it alongside the others.

"Now assuming each of these places have the same population growth rate," Verstael began, using a voice best used for reading textbooks and killing any form of motivation at 7am in the morning. "Whose people would starve first?"

.

.

.

“Therefore exporting steel and lumber, our primary resources, to Lucis in exchange for perishables we require,” Verstael finished, allowing a half-asleep twelve year old to stumble out of the white sedan. “Is not politically feasible.” 

“Uh-huh,” Prompto agreed, numbly. The school’s _right there_ , and either way he turns, there’s a lecture waiting for him.

“Prompto,” Verstael called out from the driver’s seat. “You are not the only one opposed to our course of action. Our Emperor once held the same opinion, as kind and benevolent as he was.” His nose wrinkled in thought. “Your mother used to call him a _pansy_.” 

Prompto’s jaw dropped in horror, shocked awake by the sudden revelation. He looked around for his teachers who were usually itching to give detention like perfume samples at the mall. Detention for you, and _detention for you_. He’s in a _military_ academy of all places, and bad-mouthing the Emperor was held in the same regard as pissing on the altars of the Hydrean. It’s encouraged to talk about him, sure, but not all words about the Emperor should be spoken, just like not all types of water is sacred. 

“It was all in good humor, I assure you.” Verstael cracked a rare smile. “There’s never been room for war in his heart, but his hand had been forced. Our sins have driven him mad over the years.” He paused, biting at his lip. “One day you’ll understand that there are times when peace cannot be attained, even if all parties wish for it.”

Prompto tilted his head, tugging at the straps of his backpack. “You’re not making any sense.”

“It is because we all envision peace differently.” Verstael looked to the clock on his dashboard and pressed a button, rolling up the window. “We’ll finish this conversation over dinner. Reflect on our discussion in the meantime. Farewell, son.” 

“Wait, Dad?” Prompto called out before the window could fully close, and the vehicle rocked back on its brakes. “If Niflheim needs Magitek soldiers so badly, why did you have to use _your_ genes to make them? Isn’t it creepy?” He shifted his feet. “Looking at yourself in those tanks every day?”

Verstael’s face grew grim as he tore his eyes away. That was probably the wrong thing to ask, considering the beat of silence that followed. He’s reminded of the nightmare he had, the night before, where one of the people in the tanks was chasing him. A steel-masked soldier pushing him into the chain-link walkways in the highest parts of the Keep, revealing ‘Prompto… I am your _father’_ as he dramatically takes off his mask, and it’s his _Dad’s_ face behind it, and he’s slipping from the ledge, _and he’s screaming--_

He snaps out of his daydream when Verstael finally spoke. His voice is low, and he doesn’t meet his son’s gaze.

“Because if anyone’s face is to be twisted into a monster," Verstael finally replied. "I thought it would be fitting if it were mine.”


End file.
